Bodyweight Butt, Core + Pelvic Floor Workout

One of the (many) reasons we created Mama Reset is because a tonne of our clients were asking us how they could integrate what they were learning with their Pelvic Physiotherapists into their daily life.

We’ve been there ourselves.

Lying on your back, staring at the ceiling, wondering what the heck you’re going to make for dinner, while endlessly engaging and releasing our pelvic floor muscles. Hey, it’s still a great place to start.

Even if you’ve not yet been to physiotherapy, you’ve surely run across some pelvic floor or Kegel article at some point and wondered, “Am I doing this right?” We hear this a lot.

We absolutely need to isolate the core muscles in order to really learn how to engage (and release) these muscles, but the core muscles are really only useful to us when we know how to integrate them into movement and our daily lives.

So just doing ab exercises or kegels all day, every day? Well, it just isn’t gonna work.

A little known fact when think about “the core” is that it’s more than just your abdominal muscles. If you’ve been following us for a little while you may have already heard us talking about the “Inner Unit” or “Deep Core.”

We might be a little behind in our pop culture references but we are 100% caught up in our core and pelvic floor research. In exercise science, we’re now realizing the importance of the glutes — those are your butt muscles — to the strength of the core and pelvic floor. In fact, if we had to draw our own diagram of the core we’d include the glutes. Not just because bums are fun to draw, but because they’re that important.

Together with the deep core and pelvic floor muscles, the glutes align your pelvis, back and knees. They’re like the mama of your body’s house. They hold everyone up!

We’ve got 5 of our favourite butt + core moves to take you from boring old kegels to full on functional moves to get your core working together as a system!

Or pin it to your Pinterest board! 👇🏾 Scroll down for the photos and the pin-able infographic!

Expanded exercise descriptions (see photos + infographic below):

Sidelying Forward/Back Tap

Bring yourself onto your side and let your head rest on your bottom arm. Stack your hips on top of eachother and extend your top leg long. Feel your top waist long by reaching your top hip away from you, you may feel your bottom waist lift slightly away from the floor.

The challenging part of this exercise is to keep your pelvis still as you move your top leg. Take your top foot and reach it behind the bottom leg and tap the floor with your toes. Then bring the top leg forward bringing the toes to tap the floor in front of the bottom leg.

2. Glute brige walkout

Come on down to your back with your knees bent, feet about hip width apart. Inhale to allow your belly and pelvic floor muscles to relax completely. As you exhale engage your core (draw the pelvic floor up and feel your lower belly draw inward and tighten slightly) and press down into your feet to lift your bum off the ground. Keep your ribs/bra line heavy on the mat while in this bridge position. On your next exhale, engage your core and step one foot forward slightly. Keep the lift of your foot fairly low and the further out you step, the harder it will be. Bring your foot back in as you inhale. And repeat on the other side, alternating side to side.

3. Side plank + clamshell

Staying on your side, prop yourself up so your bottom elbow is below your shoulder with your knees bent and stacked. Inhale to allow your core muscles to soften and relax. And exhale to draw up pelvic floor and low belly as you lift your bottom hip off the floor. Press down through your bottom arm and begin to lift your top knee up as you exhale.

MOD: If this is too challenging for your core or bothers your neck or shoulder, keep your bottom hip down on the ground.

4. Prone Frog bridge

Come down onto your belly, you can place your hands under your forehead for a little pillow. Bring your feet together with your knees about hip width apart. Bend your knees with your feet reaching up toward the sky. As you inhale allow your belly and pelvic floor to relax and soften. As you exhale lift the pelvic floor muscles and gently draw the low belly in, think of bringing the hip bones toward each other to create a slight tensing in the low belly. Keep the core engagement as you lift your knees up off the floor, checking that you don’t sink in your lower back. Think of pressing your knees apart to increase the work for the outer hips and glutes.

5. Bent knee hover

Come on up to your hands and knees, placing your hands under your shoulders and knees under your hips. Press into your hands and imagine pressing the floor away from you. Inhale to prepare, relax the pelvic floor muscles. As you exhale engage your core and lift your knees up off the floor, a tiny bit, about an inch or two. Check that your back doesn’t arch or sink but stays perfectly still as you hover your knees. Inhale lower your knees and allow your core to relax.

Hey, we get that a blog isn’t always going to be enough for you to FULLY grasp the steps you need to take to re-train your core and get super strong. That’s why we created our signature, all-online 6-Week Mama Reset program.